Economics 312
Final Exam Info
Spring 2014
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY
Logistics:
The final exam will be held Tuesday April 8 at 2pm in ECS 123. It will be a 3 hour exam . The exam is worth 50% of your course grade (subject to the reweight policy described below).
Only simple, non-programmable calculators are allowed. No text-storing devices are permitted. Your calculator must be (and look) non-programmable, otherwise it is a prohibited device. No other electronic devices (including tablets, iPods, phones, etc.) are permitted. Make sure all such devices are turned off before the start of any exam.
Students must bring their ID to the final exam and display it on their desk during the exam.
Extra Office Hours:
I will hold extra office hours on Friday April 4 from 11:30-1:20pm and on Monday April
7 from 12-2pm. Friday’s office hours will be held in my office (BEC 354). Monday’s extra office hours will be held in BEC 355, across the hall from my office.
Preparation:
Focus on the big picture first, when studying. Then cover finer details. If you can’t answer big picture questions, it will be difficult for you to pass the exam. Remember,
I’m not big on trivia. I’ll test a bit on the Glaeser text to make sure you read it, but even there I’ll focus on big ideas. I want to know that you understand basic concepts and models covered in the course. By understand, I don’t mean “can regurgitate.” I mean given a different question, can you apply the same model to come up with an answer.
There is a practice final posted. This is a final I gave previously for this course. Note that there are some differences in emphasis between past editions of the course and this term’s course. As a result the final I’m posting may not be perfectly representative of how I would test this year’s material. Also, the format will not be exactly the same (more on this below).
I will not post an answer key to this practice exam (2 reasons: 1) life doesn’t come with an answer key; 2) the end of term is frantic for me as well as you). But you can feel free to ask me questions about it during office hours.
Coverage:

The exam will cover all material from posted lecture notes from Notes_Intro (Topic 1) up to and including Affordable Housing (Topic 13). On Topic 12, I only covered through slide 29, so I will only test through slide 29 on Topic 12. Only worry about material in posted lecture notes and material covered in the Glaeser text. I reserve the right to give a few simple multiple choice questions on Glaeser. The readings posted online are highly recommended but won’t be directly tested.
The final is comprehensive, so material from the entire course is fair game for the final. I will somewhat overemphasize material since the second midterm, since this is my only opportunity to test it. Be sure to study all of the problem sets in doing your preparation.
Material for the exam will be drawn from the notes and material posted on the website.
The text may be useful to help you prepare, but the notes and problem sets will give the best sense of likely content.
With regards to Problem Set 5, some questions will not be covered on the final. I will not cover questions 3-4 from the True/False/Uncertain. Nor will I cover question 3 from the
Short Answers. All other questions are fair game for the exam. All questions on all other problem sets are fair game too.
Nature of the Exam
I will aim for the exam to take 120 minutes to write, though you will be allowed the full
180 minutes (3 hours) of the final period. The exam will be 120 points, which means a good student can allocate roughly 1 minute per point, and still have 60 minutes left at the end to read over and revise their answers.
The exam will have around 20 multiple choice questions worth three points each, and the remainder of questions will be Short Answer. Unlike the practice exam, there will be no
True/False/Uncertain questions.
Reweight Policy
The stated weighting of exams for purposes of determining the final course grade is described in the course outline. Weights of 25%, 25%, and 50%, respectively, are assigned to the three exams in the course--Midterm 1, Midterm 2, and Final Exam, respectively). The reweight policy I offered in class after the first midterm can only help students. It cannot hurt. The policy works as follows:
If you do better on the final than on at least one of the midterms, you may reallocate weight from the midterm on which you got the lower score (of the two midterms) to the final.
If you did worse on the first exam, I will shift the weights to 15% first midterm, 25% second midterm, and 60% final. If you did worse on the second exam, I will shift the weights to 25% first midterm, 15% second midterm, and 60% final.

An example might help to illustrate. Suppose you received a score of 30% on the first exam, 60% on the second exam, and 70% on the final. Instead of your final course grade being (0.25)*0.3+(0.25)*0.6+(0.50)*0.70=0.575 (or 57.5%) your grade would be
(0.15)*0.3+(0.25)*0.6+(0.60)*0.70=0.615 (or 61.5%). The reweighting scheme, in this case, would raise your grade by 4 percentage points.
Note that I will apply this scheme automatically, in the way that most benefits each individual student. There is no need to ask me to apply this. The scheme cannot hurt you, because if you do less well on the final than on both midterms I will automatically apply the weights noted in the course outline.
A Word on Cheating:
It is dishonorable to cheat. That should be sufficient incentive (for most of you) not to cheat. If you are by nature a dishonorable person, then you need added incentive not to cheat. Therefore any student who the invigilators catch cheating will receive a zero on the exam (and probably fail the course). You also run some risk of being kicked out of the university.